Santelli: “How can we redistribute wealth if there is no wealth?”

posted at 7:21 pm on January 16, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The headline at RCP jumped out at me, not merely because of the refreshing general truth of it, but because I highlighted the very quote that CNBC’s Santelli is paraphrasing in my post last night about Socialist French President Francois Hollande’s long-overdue semi-acknowledgement that he needs to hit reverse on some of his fiscal- and business-related policies if France is going to have any chance of shaking off its stubbornly lingering economic lethargy. As Santelli notes, much of Europe has been struggling through “recoveries” even slower than ours has been, with much bigger unemployment rates and much smaller economic growth rates — and one does wonder why the Obama administration is so blindly insistent upon neglecting these European countries’ apt examples and instead following them into the economic abyss of ever-expanding government spending and intervention.

First of all, we understand it’s not only in America. There are a lot of hardworking people around the globe who would like to work who are having problems finding work. It seems to be a skill mismatch but maybe that’s oversimplified. But no matter how you slice it, the main issue is, after five years, it’s pretty hard to call these programs ‘emergency spending programs’ and if we’re going to extend the amount of benefit you get with regard to unemployment insurance to be a new entitlement, we need to be more honest about it. I understand. But it really isn’t and shouldn’t be a stopgap measure, maybe it’s something we need to put in the budget as whole and change everything. Why? Because if what the president said is true, if just throwing money at this is good for the economy, then I challenge him to look at the extreme viewpoint in this regard from François Hollande, the president of France, a Socialist, who has tried everything the president is talking about and now is throwing up the red flag. The Journal story today, here’s what President François Hollande said: How can we run the country if entrepreneurs don’t hire? And how can we redistribute wealth if there is no wealth?

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All of that assumes that Obama wants America to be wealthy and prosperous.
There is zero evidence to support that and mucho evidence to prove the opposite.
Obama is here to manage our decline.
He thinks we have been on top too long and it is time for other nations to rise.
Super power to a second power.

Answer: You prime the pump with Fed Monopoly money, bubble the stock market and increase wealth for those able to afford investing, then tax the ever-lovin’ crap out of them to help pay for the rapidly increasing low-incomers. At least until the point when the bubble breaks. Then, repeat.

I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.~Margaret Thatcher

To add to that Margaret Thatcher citation, I note that socialist-oriented nations (and communist ones, for sure) do not respect an individual’s right to property. The self-appointed “fixers” assume that their role is to reallocate what belongs to the individual into one stew pot and divide it as they see fit.

There is no respect for the individual (“You didn’t build that!”) and thus nor respect for the individual’s rights or property.